Approximately three weeks ago, I published a commentary on Steem bidbots that got quite a bit of engagement. You can see the original experimental test post right here.
Image from Pixabay.
I'd like to apologize for taking so long to circle back around to this. I had intended to publish this post much sooner as I had come upon some extra data that informed me of my error and I wanted to share it. Unfortunately, I waited too long and can't seem to find all of it.
This is a particularly difficult post to write. Not because I have to admit I was wrong, but because I can't show you all the data I'd like to show you (and how I obtained it) in order to shed new light on the questions I wanted to answer. Sometimes life gets in the way. I couldn't publish earlier because I got consumed with tax matters, family business, onboarding a new client, and, yes, the Narrative beta launch. I guess I'll have to do my penance.
Back to the matter at hand. In my previous post, I made some erroneous assumptions. I knew when I published it I'd be inaccurate on some of them, but I had no idea by how much I'd be off. It was by A LOT.
As much engagement as that post received (there were 145 comments -- a record for me, I think), not a single person showed up to defend the bidbots. I was disappointed. As much business as they get, you'd think someone would show up and tell me how wrong I was in my conclusions and point me in the right direction. One person did. He didn't stoop to defending the bidbots, but he did question my math, and I'm thankful he did.
A big thanks to @ecoinstant for pointing out my error and getting me some data (real data) to analyze. Now I'm going to set the record straight (as best I can).
A Steem Bidbot Case Study (And Disclaimer)
I'll go ahead and get the disclaimers out of the way:
This post does not constitute an endorsement of bidbots, nor is it a criticism of them. It is simply a continuation of a case study on the economics of using bidbots to upvote posts. I do not claim the results of my experiment are universal or based on reasonable expectations. Every use of bidbots could potentially turn out differently.
Nevertheless, I'm excited to share this new data.
How Bidbots Can Increase Rewards for Every One
I'm not going to rehash the entire post where I discussed the results of my Steembot experiment. Again, you can read it here. I'm going to focus on the rewards discussion part of that post, and specifically on ROI, because that's where the focal point of my experiment rested, and it was the locus of my error. But before I discuss that, I want to state outright what I expected the results to be.
When I started the experiment, I had three hypotheses:
- I expected to get a higher ROI with my experimental post using a bidbot and no other promotion as opposed to spending two hours writing a great post and promoting it in Discord channels;
- I also expected that manual human upvotes would produce higher rewards on average for one of my normal posts than all the upvotes on my experimental post; and
- I expected that the bidbot would increase rewards for all other upvoters on that post.
In my last post, I showed that I was right about the first two hypotheses and wrong on the third. As it turns out, I was actually right on the third one, as well.
So let's go to the data:
In the previous post, I made this statement:
The bot's portion of the total upvote value for that post equates to 95.7%. If the bot received that percentage of the total curation rewards, then it took $6.45018 and left about .29 STU for everyone else, a paltry sum to divide between 25 accounts. On the other hand, those 25 accounts would have divided $1.18 STU without the bidbot vote, the lion's share of that going to @neoxian, a manual human voter.
This was based on a faulty assumption. The part in bold is the part I got wrong. The actual figure The Rising bidbot received as a percentage of curation rewards was 81.3% (keep reading; I'll show you the math below).
@ecoinstant sent me a spreadsheet with data pulled from the blockchain that included the voting times, upvote values in SBD, the amount of curation reward each voter actually received, and the performance percentage of their upvotes (which I interpret to be an equivalent to ROI). Here's a glimpse of the data:
From @ecoinstant
This data comes from an app currently in development and @ecoinstant wouldn't reveal the source. I don't blame him, but I did manage to spot check some of the numbers at the time that he sent it to me and they checked out to be pretty close to accurate. The source I used was Steemworld.
Screenshot of Steemworld.org
At the time, when I received @ecoinstant's data, I spot checked some of the data on that spreadsheet immediately and shared my findings with my source.
Here's a screenshot of @ecoinstant's data showing the payout of @therising bidbot:
From @ecoinstant
Note the 20.8% in the last column of the spreadsheet. That's the performance percentage of that bidbot vote. The bidbot's 81.3% of the total curation rewards amounted to 20.8% ROI (upvote value divided by curation rewards). So how do I know the bidbot got 81.3% of the rewards pool?
11.829 SP (Bidbot curation reward) / 14.549 SP (total curation reward) = 81.3%.
That's the easy math. Calculating the 20.8% return was a little trickier. I based my calculations on the STEEM and SBD valuations as reported by CoinMarketCap seven days after post publication time.
Screenshot of Block reported on Steemworld.org
You can see the post publication time was March 17, 2019 at 21:44 EST. Otherwise known as 9:44 p.m. I tried to get as close to 9:44 p.m. on March 24 as I could and determined the price of STEEM and SBD to be $.484105 and $1.06 USD, respectively. That's a ratio of 2.1896:1 (STEEM:SBD).
The problem, of course, is that upvote values are being reported in SBD and curation rewards are being reported in SP, so we need to convert one of them. Let's multiply the upvote value of 25.320 SBD by the STEEM:SBD ratio (2.1896), and we get 55.440672. Taking that number and dividing it into the 11.829 SP curation rewards on the spreadsheet and we end up with 21.33% ROI for The Rising bidbot.
That's not 20.8%, but the difference can be explained in a couple of ways. Because the app is a robot and I'm working manually, it's likely more accurate because it can pinpoint exact times, which are important for calculating rewards and upvotes on the blockchain. It could also be using valuations from an exchange rather than from CoinMarketCap. Either way, I'm satisfied that @ecoinstant's data is pretty accurate. And what that tells me is, all of the upvoters on my experimental post received positive payouts on their upvotes. I don't believe the bidbot destroyed their returns at all. So what are those returns?
A look at the data shows that every other upvoter saw a positive performance (ROI) with the highest being 1401.4%. Poor @jaichai, he came late to the party and only got 9.1% return. Besides @jaichai, The Rising bidbot actually saw the lowest returns from all upvoters. I actually find that surprising.
Even when we account for the early voting penalty (anyone upvoting a post within the first 15 minutes gets a small penalty in rewards payout). The highest among those was .007 SBD by @happycrazycon, who voted at 10.4 minutes after publication time. That upvoter saw a 254.9% return on their upvote.
My grand conclusion is this: Based on this case study, there is no reason to believe that upvoters lose rewards on all bidbot votes. In fact, as I originally surmised, bidbot votes can lead to higher rewards for other voters. But I want to reiterate my disclaimer: The evidence is inconclusive. What that means is, this experiment doesn't account for all factors that can affect upvote values and curation rewards. For instance, it's likely that a bidbot vote at 15 minutes after post publication time would drastically affect the curation rewards of anyone upvoting a post after that. So I'm not willing to say that bidbots are intrinsically profitable, but this case study does call into question the oft-repeated mantra that bidbots do damage to the rewards pool. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.
One final word. None of this has anything to say, of course, about the repercussions of the trending page that shows nothing but mediocre posts (at best) propped up by bidbots. I still believe something should be done about the trending page, but I'm not willing to condemn bidbot use outright.
Note: If you're tagged below, it's because you upvoted or commented on my first commentary post. This will not be a regular occurrence.
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Call me old fashioned in blogging, sitting working out bid-bots timing, working out whether or not they have ROI, IMHO looks and feels like gaming a system.
If you are gaming the system for more gain in marketing, then perhaps use them, off-setting expense against profits, each post would have to be calculated for profit/loss.
Back to old fashioned blogging, spend time and effort writing beneficial informative posts, people eventually start to enjoy and come back. Use tags and keywords, join great communities where people do enjoy content.
Thoroughly enjoyed reading the comments, it helps open ones eyes as to personal taste.
Yes, there is absolutely something to be said for old-fashioned manual curation and blogging techniques. I've lived by them for 13 years. :-)
This is why the best ROI curators get their results from identifying large bid-bot bids and then front-running those votes. Earlier curators always take value from later curators, especially when the later votes are orders of magnitude larger than later votes.
The 'harm' that bid-bots do to the reward pool (if you see it as harm) is not about the distribution of curation rewards, it's that bid-bots change the distribution of rewards from 'quality' driven curation to 'purchased' curation. Whether this is good or bad is a values-driven position, not a quantitative 'provable' position.
Do purchased votes and automated votes violate 'Proof of Brain'? Or do they perfectly exemplify proof of brain (human's improving results by applying 'brain' to the automation of curation instead of by applying it to post and curation quality?)
Which take more intellectual effort? A girl scout selling cookies door to door, or an Amazon-supported website in the Amazon Cloud selling fulfilled-by-amazon virtual cookies?
Why do we expect 'Proof of Brain' to look like humans manually drudging away at easily automated work?
@josephsavage
That's exactly the dilemma and for those of us who were lured here under the pretext of "quality" have struggled and @blockurator's point about the trending page is well made. When I first arrived, it was precisely what was on that page that sent me off the platform and into purgatory for nearly six months until I was persuaded to return.
I fully agree that the 'Trending' page is problematic.
I actually have begun to think that this was where the real harm took place:
Alas, yes. I fear that the horse has bolted.
I am working on a response for quill, but basically, the portion of the reward pool that is distributed to 'quality curation' will probably always exist, but there will hopefully be many. Currently there are 3-4 main ones, and some seem like 'quality' in there own way, so the revolution hasn't dawned on many.
I also believe that 'get paid to blog' was a short sighted tag line, and has led people to believe that something is being taken from them as more use cases come online.
As anyone who has blogged anywhere for any length of time will tell you. I couldn't agree more.
It's a perception problem. I'd be curious to know why you returned.
It is. And the answer is simple: @steemitbloggers aka #powerhouse creatives and things had shifted (too complicated to go into) so that I felt more able to participate. Participating and that community has had a ripple effect and through it I've, as it were, spread my wings....a little.
Awesome! That's good to hear. They're doing great things.
Well said. The reason I experimented with a virtually blank post was because I could take quality out of the picture. If I were to do everything else exactly the same with one of my best high-quality posts, chances are, if the price of STEEM and/or SBD didn't change too much to eat my profits, I'd see similar results. I'd have also likely had more human upvoters, so I'd have had to account for the wider distribution of the rewards pool.
And to your point on earlier voters, that's why @curie doesn't vote on quality posts right away. They have very strict criteria on post quality, and other factors. One of those is, they don't vote on posts that have received a bidbot vote. I suspect that has less to do with ethical concerns regarding bidbots and more to do with whether or not they can reasonably expect a positive ROI from their upvote when voting after the bidbot.
That's what I've been saying all along. I don't think you can quantify results that way.
Thanks for your input.
@josephsavage,
Now that's a damn fine name, isn't it?
Quill
Bid bots are a tricky issue.. I think I would think of them as paid promotion, like marketing. It can be good or bad... We often point to the trending page (of scammers) as the most obvious misuse of the bots. However, there are people who use them to try and get exposure for a well written piece.
I have more of an issue with some curation accounts or the upvote for use services that are sometimes (no data sorry...) upvoting really terrible piece of work or sometimes even outright plagiarism...
Anyway, great that you were able to circle back and readjust your findings in light of some new information! An incredibly rare trait these days!
That's true. I see Steem Monsters using them all the time. They have thousands of followers and get plenty of upvotes on every post, and their quality is about as high as you can get. Still, they use bidbots. Yes, it's a marketing expense.
I don't like to be wrong.
By increasing the rshares pulling from the pool bid bots decrease rewards for everybody else.
That trophy roi on your 'advertising' 'investment' took rewards from folks who got voted voluntarily by the community.
When a whale votes everybody else loses money.
When a bid bot vote it rewards the greediest among us while taking from those willing to respect pob.
That, and the crap on trending giving us a black eye, what's not to love about bid bots and proof of wallet?
You're talking about the total rewards pool, right? Can you show me the math on that?
Yep.
https://steemit.com/utopian-io/@paulag/the-impact-of-unused-steempower-on-the-rewards-pool-blockchain-business-intelligence
The flaw in this math is that an account can't take 100% of the pool unless nobody else votes, only the percentage of the whole represented by its rshares.
So, the whale doesnt take 100%, but 99% is not impossible.
The top 10 voters routinely take 30%.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@statsmonkey/biggest-upvoters-3132018---part-i
That's certainly enlightening, but there's got to be a simpler explanation somewhere. I think it's unreasonable to expect 100% available SP to be used for upvoting, but I get the point. There is a lot left unused, and it's heavy at the top, SP that could go to grow the platform and pass rewards to more people.
If only one vote is cast, it gives the entire pool.
If three votes are cast, 1 10mv, 1 1000mv, and 1 1000000mv, they split the pool according to their stake.
The million sp vote gives 100k times the amount the 10mv vote gives.
Now, pull the whale vote and tell me if you like that distribution of the pool better?
When large accounts vote the little accounts get pushed off the long tail.
For every 300stu post on trending 3000 minnows got nothing.
When whales vote they dont just give, they also take away.
The pool is a commons.
Calling for them to vote more is counter productive, if you want to help the minnows.
It helps their select few at the expense of everybody else.
I didn't get it, either.
Until it was explained to me.
If you want more rewards less whale voting is the ticket.
Bid bots are bad for everybody except its owner, and even them if they crash the coin.
They know the math, but prioritize profits now over long term success.
I have noticed that I've gotten fewer rewards on posts where large accounts voted heavily. And I know there are some who weight their votes based on the ROI they hope to receive. I don't have the patience for that. And I've never asked a whale to vote. I don't see the point in chasing whales. So you got their attention. Big deal. Now what?
My plan is just to focus on creating awesome content and let rewards take care of themselves. I don't seem to be doing badly with that plan.
Steem on, it's about all we can do, atp.
He has a point, to a point. Unstaked steem and non-voting sp do not split the reward pool.
What is less clear is what people would be doing with their SP if not delegating it to bidbots. If they rented delegation through dlease or self voted, the reward pool math would not change. But if they traded it on exchanges or otherwise kept it liquid or didn't vote with it, everyone elses vote would distribute more.
See my comment.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@blockurator/re-freebornangel-re-blockurator-steembot-experiment-part-2-i-miscalculated-20190415t103838083z#@freebornangel/re-blockurator-re-freebornangel-re-blockurator-steembot-experiment-part-2-i-miscalculated-20190415t151614219z
Right. It matters what is done with the resources sans the tools used to "game the system." If they use alternative means to game the system to the same level and weight, nothing changes. That's the big what-if. And it's a big what-if, because if bidbots did not exist, the same people who are using them now would find another way to game the system. People don't change just because their tools do.
That's certainly enlightening, but there's got to be a simpler explanation somewhere. I think it's unreasonable to expect 100% available SP to be used for upvoting, but I get the point. There is a lot left unused, and it's heavy at the top, SP that could go to grow the platform and pass rewards to more people.
Excellent work @blockurator
This clearly is a journey of knowledge and not a black or white situation. I have never professed to understanding this subject completely but I am following your research closely.
Thanks for the update.
Gaz
Posted using Partiko Android
Thank you. It's difficult to explain all of this, and even more difficult to figure it all out in my head. But I find it quite interesting how it all fits together.
@blockurator
Thank you for this follow-up post and the new data. It's fascinating. I also appreciate your neutral stance on the issue of bidbots and have taken on board what @raj808 says which suggests a conflict between the original goals of the platform and what he describes as its gamification.
Elements of your arguments seem to me, to be diametrically opposed, but you and he, @josephsavage and I, all seem to agree that the trending page does the entire Steemit community a disservice.
I remain neutral to bidbots because they're simply tools. I can hate the hammer because Org decided to bash in Borf's head with it or realize that had Org decided to build a house instead he'd have done both he and Borf a tremendous service. Org made a bad decision. ;-)
Makes perfect sense. A poor craftsman blames his tools.
Yes, and not just craftsmen. Everyone else too. All this ranting about bidbots is just useless noise if no one realizes that bidbots don't act on their own. There is always a wizard behind the curtain. He might be a short little imp-looking unimpressive specimen of the human race, but what a smart imp!
It's not wise to hate the rock for making a hole in the caveman's skull. It didn't fly on its own.
Wisdom, alas, lost on many here who indulge in ad hominems...
Posted using Partiko Android
Because they have nothing else to fall back on.
@blockurator & @ecoinstant,
The contentiousness of Bidbots (the "Raping of the Reward Pool") is NOT predicated upon the effects Bidbots have upon a post's participants (the poster and the post's upvoters). It is, rather, predcated upon the effects they have upon all other non-involved Steemians (the system as a whole).
The Reward Pool is a LIMITED shared resource ... meaning that the amount of newly minted currency that is distributed each day is fixed.
Bidbots divert a HUGE percentage of upvotes (money) away from Distribution Based Upon Content Quality (as determined by the collective opinion of the audience) to Distribution Based Upon Vote-Buying.
The Second Order effects of this reality are even more pernicious. Because so much of Whale/Orca SP (approximately 85% of the total) is delegated to Bidbots (in order to generate an alternative source of Passive Income in lieu of the intended Curation Awards), "Professional Curators" are starved of the upvoting capital that is required to make such endeavor profitable.
Simply, Professional Curators (the first, and critical, actors in the process of discovery of quality content) require large stakeholders (attempting to generate legitimate Passive Income in the form of Curation Awards) to follow their Curation Trails so as to force-multiply their own upvotes. This bumps their curated posts into Hot & Trending, thusly garnering such posts additional exposure ... and financial remuneration.
The Curation Process was designed to trigger a Domino Effect.
Because of the MASSIVE diversion of upvoting SP to Bidbots, however, the entire Curation Process has been castrated. Hence, Professional Curators are all-but-non-existent ... and the few that do exist are all-but-impotent.
STEEM/Steemit is a SYSTEM ... and a system MUST be analyzed in its totality. A reductionist "analysis of its parts" misses the "emergent properties" that only become apparent when viewed as a whole.
Make no mistake ... BIDBOTS ARE CANCER and, absent reform, they and other game-rigging mechanisms WILL destroy the blockchain.
Merit or Manipulation (and their respective consequences) ... one cannot escape the fundamental dynamaics.
Quill
I am travelling so please forgive any errors - I love interacting with you Quill because you make it so much fun! I am already tempted to hit you with a
!dramatoken
Depending on timing, I may successfully get a 'vote' from dramtoken for helping them identify drama on the chain (not quality).
Will this alternative use 'break the blockchain'?
(brb boarding a plane)
We made it! And I'm already voted (perhaps pre-quality because I'm just getting started)
There are other purposes for steem blockchain, it is as simple and as complicated as that - I want to write a book about it!
Think about Utopian, who use the power of steem to incentivize open source contributions. They distribute a growing part of the reward pool to that use case.
Have you gone to trending recently? I actually avoided it for a long time, so I was somewhat surprised to realize that there is much less 'any'-quality content and quite a bit more project posts announcements from new apps, businesses and groups.
I suppose how steemit was pitched is not what we are experiencing, but to my eyes the future is bright not bleak. These ever expanding use-cases will raise the value of the segment of the reward pool distributed to quality curation as well, even as more sp is locked up and voting.
To me, proof of voluntary should be important. The other option seems to be to dominate a shrinking ecosystem, lets see how 'only blogging' blockchains work out - more are coming online seemingly all the time!
But I suspect that 'get paid to blog' is a terrible business model - its a value suck from any ecosystem. For value to get paid (for that stake you are getting paid to retain value dispite consistent selling) we need value add use-cases. I'm working with a few groups to create that future, where what you get paid for your high quality is still worth something, not despite of bidbots, but because of them, and others.
The more I learn of the blockchain and the different initiatives, the more excited I am, as well. I can certainly see a future where the blogging component is not dominant component. What creators have in mind when they create new technology is often not how that technology ends up being used. And that's okay.
@quillfire
Graphic but apt.
I fear so.
You've got
DRAMA!To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.We can say the same thing about curation trails. Send money to @qurator and you're redistributing rewards that could go to someone else. The quality of your post may not matter in the end.
And yet, every system is an amalgamation of its component parts. You can't fix a transmission by standing on the curb looking at the car. ;-)
@blockurator,
EDIT: "MANUAL" Curators.
Quill
Duly noted.
My EDIT: ...
lookingyelling at the car.Thank you for tagging me
And the follow up on the bid bot saga :)
I am not savvy with these things... and I think I'll leave it at that :)
At least you've expressed an interest. Thanks for reading.
It was a pleasure
I think it was an interesting experiment. And as Joseph savage says
But, he's not picked up on the secondary (more damaging) harm that bidbots do to the platform; that of reputation. I know this to be fact as I've seen the amount of people who've quit because they say the steem Blockchain is a con. In my earlier days as a curie curator I saw many high quality content creators quit (as I was watching them to submit to curie), and in nearly every case where they gave a reason in a final post, they mentioned vote-buying bots. Basically, what I'm saying is that the reputational damage done by these people leaving and broadcasting their dissatisfaction through other sites like medium or patreon, can not be underestimated.
The truth is that the gaming of the system by many different people on steem is what causes the low retention rate. I've heard it said by a prominent bidbot owner that if he didn't do it someone else would. To be fair to this person they try to regulate what content gets voted with their bot. But IMO, if the bidbot owners stopped doing what they're doing and formed a whale alliance that flagged anyone trying to run a bidbot into oblivion, then bidbots would be eliminated from steem.
This idea is not without merit both from moral and business stand point. I'm pretty sure that if steem was functoning without vote buying when the bull market returns, both the amount of people joining steem, and the retention rate would sky-rocket.
Anyway, that's my two cents. If any bidbot owners read this comment, please understand, this is not an attack on you. I genuinely think that bidbots are limiting the growth of the platform and that, long term, even the bidbot owners would make a bigger profit/ROI with a $100/steem price. That is a price we'll never see, with steem as a content based platform, while these levels of gaming the system continue.
I agree with you, Rowan. That's the real damage. I never check the trending page because you don't see real quality posts there. It's a shame people have left the platform for this reason, but they have. A lot of them. And that's why Narrative is operating the way it is operating. They don't want the bidbots, and they've got measures in place to discourage them. If they do well and can work out the bugs in their own platform, all those people who left Steem could land there. It doesn't matter how profitable a business practice is, if it damages your reputation among the audience you're trying to attract, the long-term implications will hurt more than the short-term gains will benefit you. Unfortunately, that's a very difficult metric to measure.
Now, that makes me begin to re-think my not joining Narrative.
It should.
Of course, the weaknesses of Narrative are starting to show themselves. I think the difference is that the Narrative staff seems interested in fixing their issues. The question is, can they? We'll have to see, but I'm hopeful.
@raj808
Very interesting observations. I hadn't thought of bidbots as a gamification of the platform. It does put an entirely new slant on it, and raises for me, again, the issue of those of us who code versus those of us who don't and also those of us who game (for tokens) and those of us who don't (game at all), and in turn, who uses the platform for what. So there seems to be a conflict which leads me to concur with your final point:
I still prefer manual curation as opposed to bots. I realize they have their place, but, I haven't seen a bot intelligent enough to know quality when it is spelled out to them
So basically, it is a vote for vote or popularity contest?
Where is the quality in that?
Well said.
With you 100% on this, was the content beneficial, enjoyable, raise debate or do anything for the readers. Or was it a case it had over a thousand upvotes with no comments.
Exactly. Which is very disheartening to me. Where is this place that wanted quality content? Or is every post with a picture and a line of text considered quality, if you can afford the bots that you pay to say so?
I refuse to do it, so I will stay at the bottom of the pile.
I simply don't self-vote nor use bots, goes against my grain, I think a good few of us will keep each other company at the bottom of the pile....
Keeping good company 😊
Hehehe!!! The bottom isn't so bad. I can sleep at night. :)
Nice! I like the diligence on this one. Good on @ecoinstant and his top secret assessment tools as well!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yes, @ecoinstant deserves most of the credit. His tool gave me data I didn't have access to, and he helped with some of the math too. :-)
I should head this off, I only have access to this one, though I am building some tools, with help!
Steemlogs.info might be of interest to you, blogging in series? I will be making an announcement later this week that it is live, but I'd love to hear your feedback!
The development of this site will eventually let us all have access to analysis and other niche tools like these!
Awesome! I'll have to check this out.
I didn't mean to imply @ecoinstant is the developer tool. Apologies if I misstated your involvement. But I'm appreciative that you shared the data and helped me unravel it. :-)
Happy to help! And I just wanted to make it clear on chain, because the one who made this tool is a really super smart doctor and when its ready to be public I'll be happy to tell everybody!
Congratulations @blockurator!
Your post was mentioned in the Steem Hit Parade in the following category:
Thanks for the upvote. I did a few experiments last year and decided that it really wasn't worth paying for upvotes based on the data I collected. It is better to focus on writing for initiatives, such as #steemstem.
Proud member of #powerhousecreatives
Yes, bidbot voting is risky. If you bid too early, or you don't bid the right amount, you can lose.
It was a mistake, to me not a big deal. I know that you would never intentionally try to lead others astray. All it takes is someone to say something. In this case @ecoinstant had that bit of knowledge you needed. The jury is still out for me. I agree with what others say about the potential for abuse. Which we all know was a problem for quite a while. Either I've gotten so use to seeing it I've become numb, but I don't see it as much as a problem as it was.
I have personally found out very recently, the communities you are a part of makes a HUGE difference. Nothing beats actual engagement. For someone who is a minnow or higher a bidbot might be more beneficial. Where someone like me not so much. Very basic numbers 20% of 10.00 post = 2.00 compared to 20% of 1.00 post = .20 So for redfish and plankton, it's not worth it. It does some to become beneficial at some point.
Yeah, I agree. It makes more sense if you have money to throw at it. And if you've got chops, you don't need it. Your best bet is to churn out awesome content in hopes of a Curie pick-up.
Now, that's a pro attitude. Thanks for sorting it out. I think bidbots had different patterns, of course you could pay to promote your post more than 15 minutes after it was posted. Some of them had requirements - posts older than 15 minutes. And some just knew when to step in to not hurt the pool, I guess. The ethical bots, trying to follow Asimov's rules of robotics?
The media was once required (more like self-conscious about it - image and all) to do clarifying posts like this one but I don't see it happening much nowadays. (This sentence is not backed by any actual data. My bad being a bad, bad, opinion thrower.)
I believe in old-school journalism ethics. If you're wrong, admit it. Then make it right. That's what I try to do.
I appreciate the tag @blockurator, because the bid bot thing is definitely a situation that needs exploring. Well, maybe situation is too dramatic a word, but it is something that has been coming up since I first joined Steem in late 2017, so obviously needs to be addressed.
I can see both sides of it - I've used bit bots before, and I do think they have their place, but there's also so much abuse (like shit posts paying out hundreds). Not sure of the answer, but I found your experiment very thought provoking. Thanks for doing this.
You're welcome. Provoking thought is really the point.
I missed your first post but I'm glad you came back and updated the information. This was very informative. I try to use a bid bot once a day for 1SBD, it usually ups my rewards to around 1SBD so I figure it's a wash. But my SP increases two fold. 👍
Posted using Partiko Android
That's awesome. Thanks for the feedback.
The thing is that...Bid-bot are so active that even a shot posts get a huge boost...making a no sense of its existence.
Posted using Partiko Android
Exactly. Of course, bidbots can be used on prize-winning posts just as well.
Well this seems to be a popular post, but then you do make a few of them...
Thanks @wales.
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i think the best return is find the person who always use bidbot and be the first and upvote it to get the most share in curation .
That's a clever approach, if you have the time.